Roos and Mingos at the Zoo
Lo went to a Indycar race a few weekends ago so Jenson and I were on our own for the weekend. When he woke from his nap on Friday, I made a quick decision to head to the Zoo. Well, quick as anything with Jenson can be. I had to pack some food (because he’s too picky to eat anything from anywhere), and getting him ready is always fun. My mom isn’t known for getting out of the house quickly (outfit/shoe changes, needing to grab a jacket or sweater even if it’s 85 degrees, etc.)…and Jenson takes after her with that. He gets excited to go somewhere and immediately wants to put on his shoes and hat (“shoes, shoes, hat, hat, hat”), but I have to chase him and catch him to change his diaper and/or clothes because he starts wandering all over frantically. And I learned better than to ask him if he wants to take a toy or book because it takes him forever to pick something out – we just leave some stashed in the cars now. I have to pack extra clothes and towels too because he’s had a few car sickness situations and the Zoo is a good 45 minutes away. So yeah…a last minute decision takes at least 30 minutes to execute.
We got there at the perfect time because people were leaving for the day and not many were still around after 5 pm on a Friday. The Zoo is open until 7, so that’s plenty of time for us to do all of the walking we want to do. I usually just pick a couple of sections to cover instead of trying to rush through the whole Zoo – it’s huge and takes all day. This trip we covered the Aquarium first because it was pretty hot when we got there, and it’s always nice and cool inside – so we hung out with the fish and manatees (which were sleeping) for 30 minutes or so.
We headed through the Congo Expedition and African Forest next. African Safari is on the other side of the Zoo, which we visited last time we were there (and again since). Jenson liked sitting with the gorilla, and a nice lady offered to take our picture together. We watched the bonobos play for a bit – the babies are always so funny – and the mandrills (monkeys with the crazy “painted” faces.
We rushed through most of Australia and the Islands, but hung out with the kangaroos for a bit. This exhibit is awesome because the ‘roos aren’t really kept behind barriers. There’s a low wooden fence, but they are completely capable of jumping over it and hanging out on the path (and often do). There’s always zoo staff stationed in there to keep people from touching the kangaroos that are in the path, but they’ll let you kneel down to take pictures with them. When we came in, “Caroline” was hanging out on the path near the entrance, so we watched her and the bird and took pictures. Jenson watched the others for a few minutes too – most were just laying around, but some were hopping. The koala was sleeping (as always), so we headed towards the exit. He’s big on saying bye to all of the animals as we leave the exhibits, “bye ‘Roo, bye kola”.
(we may be standing in kangaroo pee – or they’d given her water before we came in…)
On our way out, we checked out the penguin and heard the noise it makes “Woo…”, and then watched the flamingos for a bit, which Jenson loved, and kept saying “Mingos”.
Flamingos always make me feel bad because we went to the Zoo after Jenson’s 1 year checkup – and we didn’t know that his arm was broken (he’d fallen before we got home from work to take him to the appt). The Dr. thought it was just sore because Jenson wasn’t reacting when he was checking it. We walked through part of the Zoo that day and by the end (at the Flamingos) we were trying to take a picture and he just started crying and was all kinds of upset. We still didn’t know it was broken until the next day when I called the Dr. back and asked if we could get an Xray. So anyway, when I see the flamingos, I always think of this picture and it makes me feel bad.
So we did a redo:
We left at closing time and he slept the whole way home and went to sleep pretty quickly at home. He talked about the mingos, roos, fishies, and monkeys all weekend though.